


traumatic wound (mechanical)

by saintchlorine



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Forced Feminization, Medical Torture, NOT weddie positive or centered sorry y'all, Other, rated E for violence not sex, see a/n for warnings i cannot possibly list them all here, waylon doesn't make it out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:26:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29944452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintchlorine/pseuds/saintchlorine
Summary: Footsteps drew nearer and Waylon, never a religious man, stared up at the ceiling and asked God,"Why didn't you let me die?""Darling?"Jesus fucking Christ, why didn't you let me die?(waylon doesn't escape. amateur surgeons can be so careless.)
Relationships: Eddie Gluskin/Waylon Park, Lisa Park/Waylon Park
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	traumatic wound (mechanical)

**Author's Note:**

> (okay, content warning rundown: brief but graphic descriptions of rape, lots of graphic imagery / wound description, violence, misogyny, etc etc. typical outlast stuff. again, this is NOT a weddie positive or focused fic, just fyi.)
> 
> not beta'd, so apologies for any errors!

_**I. atrophy** _

He wasn't fast enough.

When he was a kid, his dad urged him to get involved in athletics. Waylon tried out for a few things, usually ending in either humiliation or, worse yet, a judgemental shrug with the _no_ implied.

Track was the only sport he'd ever been capable of. He wasn't one for cross-country but did well with sprints. Back home, he still had a few of his old medals tucked away in some dusty box downstairs. He thought about those medals for a moment as his ribs bruised on Gluskin's clavicle, carried over his shoulder like a sack of flour on its way to god-knows-where. Waylon used to get _medals_ for being fast.

If he'd eaten beforehand, if he knew how much time he'd been in the Engine, how long his muscles had been degrading for, if he hadn't been running and running and _running,_ he would have made it. He knew he could have if he'd been a split-second faster, had just a smidge more power. Waylon would be free.

His muscles ached and he thought about Lisa, wondered if she'd find his notes or if they'd burn this place to the ground, turn him and his letters and his footage into a pile of ash. She had to know by now. Lisa was smart, she was fucking _smart,_ she'd figure Murkoff out. He just didn't know if she'd manage it in time.

He pictured her on her knees, digging through the rubble to find a piece of him, something she could take home and tell the boys about. Oh god, the _boys,_ they were going to be so lost without him. He'd never get to see them grow up, never see them go to prom or bring home a date, he'd never get to embarrass them with long stories about stupid stuff they did when they were little. He would never be a grandfather, never hold a baby again, he'd never kiss Lisa or run a hand through her hair, detangle it with his fingers and hum a song he couldn't remember the name of.

At least his body didn't hurt too badly. Everything was still in working order, albeit a bit less functional than usual. There might still be a way out of here, he thought, hearing a door slam behind him. He was in good enough shape to run a little longer.

When Gluskin heaved Waylon off his shoulder and down onto an operating table, an aborted sob choked its way out of his throat. His throat was so dry that the sound hurt, scraping his trachea raw. Gluskin grinned at him as he cinched up the restraints quickly, not giving Waylon enough time to _think_ , let alone run.

At least his body didn't hurt too badly.

He held his breath and realized it may be the last time he could ever say that.

A saw started behind the table.

_**II. open wound, uncomplicated** _

It wasn't clear how long he'd been asleep.

Dust was floating all around him, catching the dim light that peeked through the window in slivers. When he blinked, little particles flew off his eyelashes, his face dry and caked with grime. The room was completely silent and his ears rang in the absence of sound. It reeked of old blood, dingy and bitter with a metallic stench spearing through. For a small, blessed moment, Waylon had no clue what was going on.

Everything came back to him when he tried to move his legs.

He wailed in pain, the sound ripping from his chest and cracking his voice, as he felt something _tear._ Blood began to pool underneath him, all slick and warm and horrible. The pain was indescribable; his eyes flashed white-hot and it burned and burned and he didn't realize he was screaming until he heard a door slam nearby. He tried to shut himself up and play dead but he couldn't stop the whimpers of pain that spilled out.

Footsteps drew nearer and Waylon, never a religious man, stared up at the ceiling and asked God, " _Why didn't you let me die?"_

"Darling?"

_Jesus fucking Christ, why didn't you let me die?_

"Oh, goodness! Look at the mess you've made," Gluskin tutted, circling the table like a shark. Waylon's breaths came in fast and hard and every muscle in his body clenched as the man – the _monster –_ surveyed him. "This won't do at all."

Gluskin left the room and Waylon prayed he'd bring some more of that gas from before, knock him out nice and easy and do whatever he needed to do from there. He tried to map the room with his limited view, straining his neck as he searched for an exit, a weapon, _something._ It was all stupid wishful thinking; even if there was a way out, he wouldn't be able to make it. He couldn't even move his toes without awakening that brutal fucking burn between his thighs. Waylon knew what it meant. He knew what happened, it could have only been one thing, but he couldn't think about it. There was no way. Instead, he clenched his teeth, seethed through the pain, and thought about her.

— He thought about when they were 23, fresh out of college and still living in some shitty apartment halfway between Oakland and Berkeley. The elevator in their building was perpetually out of order, so he climbed up and down five flights of stairs every day. He got a little cocky on them after a while, jogging up two at a time just because he could. One day, when his arms were full of groceries, he missed the landing on the final step and slammed into the carpet. A bag of groceries went flying forwards, landing right in the center of the hallway, while the other bag tumbled down the stairs, paper crinkling with each step.

Lisa heard the commotion and came outside to check. When she saw him there, rug rash on his face and eggs soaking into the carpet, she only laughed for about ten seconds before helping him up. It was a commendably short timeframe, at least for her. He hissed when he put weight on his right ankle and immediately started worrying out loud that it was broken, that he needed to go to the hospital and _oh my god what if they have to amputate?_ She slung an arm around his waist and helped him hop back into their apartment, telling him to relax and that he'd be fine.

When she sat him down on the couch and surveyed the damage, she smiled and said it was just sprained. Lisa was always a master at armchair diagnoses; she attributed it to her mother's work as a veterinarian and a childhood spent reading medical textbooks for fun. Then again, he wasn't always sure he trusted medical advice from an international relations major.

"Shouldn't we get a second opinion? You know, from an actual doctor?" Waylon asked as she bandaged him up. She looked up at him, eyebrows raised, and snipped the gauze.

"When one of us gets a job with health insurance, sure. Then we can get as many second opinions as we want."

She cleaned up everything outside and put the groceries away (or at least what remained of them). Waylon felt guilty making her do it all, but every time he tried to express that she waved him off.

"You'd do the same for me," she asserted. "It's not like I can't handle picking up some eggs, right?"

Lisa was one of the most tenacious, intense people he'd ever met. And yet she still treated every wound as if it was the first she'd ever seen, with gentle fingers and hot compresses and slow, even wipes with a washcloth. She would take care of him right now.

He would do the same for her.

There was a moment when he could almost pretend that the footsteps approaching again were hers. He tried to imagine her in those huge boots she wore when they were younger, the ones that made the downstairs neighbors complain. For a split second, it worked. 

Then Gluskin spoke.

"Womanhood truly is a trial, hm? But you're the strongest I've met in a long time. The other ones, those _whores_ , they gave up on love far too soon. You, darling… You're different. Special."

He didn't even get water to clean the wound with, just came back with scraps of sepia-stained fabric and dragged them over the angry, slit flesh between Waylon's legs. The rough fabric catching on flayed skin, nerves simultaneously numb and screaming, the warm blood that just kept pouring and pouring and _pouring_ –

"You'll be such a wonderful mother, darling."

It was too much to scream, so his body did the only thing left it could.

Waylon, with tears pouring down his face and striping lines in the old dust, laughed as hard as he could.

_**III. open wound, complicated** _

Time was beginning to feel more like an abstract concept than a hard-and-fast rule. Moments flitted into one another most of the time, no real connection between them, no linear narrative to wrap it all up in. There was nothing linear about any of this.

All Waylon knew for certain was that he was stuck in this room, he was wearing a white dress made out of a truly horrible fabric, and that the marriage had just been consummated.

Maybe "just" wasn't the correct word. In all honesty, it had probably been a couple of hours since Eddie left. The ache between his legs screamed otherwise, feeling just as fresh as the moment it had been cut. For a day or so, it scabbed up red and brown in the drier spots. The skin had crusted around the makeshift catheter, starting to swallow up the tubing as it healed around it. Eddie nipped that in the bud as soon as he saw it, tearing the catheter out and insisting that everything was "in working order now."

Waylon hadn't realized what that truly meant in the moment. Of course, he didn't see what Eddie saw: a perfectly good hole. It didn't take him long to make use of those newly working parts.

The surgical site (if it could even be called that) still burned, both in pain and temperature. The skin was searing red and puffy all around the slit, hot to the touch and more sensitive than any wound Waylon ever had before. He realized in horror that the swelling would only strengthen the illusion for Eddie, the inflamed skin puckering over the hole he'd carved out. It looked like someone tenderized raw beef with a mallet and then injected Botox into it. Waylon avoided looking down whenever possible in the spirit of not puking whatever still remained in his stomach.

Eddie only gave him a few days after the operation before he decided their wedding was in order. He forced Waylon into a huge, scratchy dress that hung horribly on his chest and clearly designed for someone else. The ceremony had an audience; 15 corpses, maggots in their eyes and chunks of flesh missing from their bodies, wearing similarly ill-sewn formal attire and placed in chairs. A different corpse with a metal rod stuck down its throat, jabbing out again between his legs and pinning him upright, served as the minister. Eddie must have been able to hear it saying something because he spoke the vows as if prompted.

Waylon couldn't remember whether or not he said _I do._ He'd barely been able to keep his eyes open, let alone enter into a contract of marriage. The black eye he was touting told him he must have hesitated, and the ring on his left hand told him he must have said it eventually.

He remembered when he got married to Lisa, the engagement ring slipped off of her finger during the officiation. Waylon hadn't known her ring size so he measured her finger while she was asleep on the couch. He hadn't accounted for the swelling of pregnancy and ended up with a ring that was far too big for her. She never let him live it down; there was a still from their wedding video blown up and framed in their living room, the engagement ring a motion blur as it slipped to the ground.

They got married in a courthouse, no grand ceremony or long vow recital, just a few family members and each other. It was sweet and intimate and Lisa didn't even put on a dress, just a white button-up shirt and her "good jeans," as she always called them. The whole thing was so _them_ , complete with their oldest son crying in his grandma's arms as the minister tried to conduct everything. Jacob was so tiny then, only a month old, and dressed in a onesie with a fake tuxedo print on it. Afterward, they went out to eat at a shitty buffet and got food poisoning that lasted 48 hours. All in all, it was the happiest day of his life.

He thought about that as laid on a horrible old mattress, feverish and blurring in and out of consciousness, dress hiked up to his waist and Eddie "fixing" him. The incision wasn't deep enough for what Gluskin wanted to do, not by a long shot, so he took out that disgusting old knife and made a new hole. Waylon could hardly even feel it anymore, the nerves so burnt up and damaged that it didn't feel like anything down there. Maybe it was just shock, his brain trying to protect him from what was happening, sequestering the pain and tucking it away where Waylon wouldn't find it.

Gluskin was talking the entire time he fucked him, but Waylon didn't hear a word of it. Something in his head snapped at some point, kept everything so far away. He couldn't pinpoint when exactly; maybe when Eddie took out the knife, maybe at the wedding, maybe the minute he was strapped into the Engine. It didn't matter. He didn't have to think about anything except for Lisa.

When Eddie was done, he pressed a kiss to Waylon's sweaty forehead and brushed the hair out of his face with blood-caked fingers. Then, he was gone. No comforting, no further words, no anything. He just left.

Waylon laid as still as he could, not having the energy to move a single muscle. He wanted to sleep.

Something was dripping from between his legs and onto the dress below, soaking the fabric and reeking. He wasn't sure if it was blood, pus, cum, or all of the above. None of it mattered now. There was no way out of this. Waylon was finally accepting it.

The monster was swallowing him up, carving his body up and infecting every piece of him from the inside out. It lived in every wall, every cell, every window and every floating dust particle. He breathed it in and puked it out and slept in it night after night, day after day. It was all that was left now.

Gluskin broke him good.

He just wanted to sleep.

_**IV. necrosis** _

It was a stupid idea to look. Waylon recognized that.

Looking at wounds can make them hurt more, make you more afraid, lower your blood pressure to keep the bleeding down, exacerbate your condition. Waylon had heard all of it before. He thought he knew what to expect, thought he understood the extent of the damage. Call it morbid curiosity, maybe a natural reaction after hours without any stimuli, whatever you want to attribute it to. Regardless, he wasn't ready for _that._

Waylon knew it was infected. Of course it was, in a place like this and with Gluskin as his caregiver. He felt the heat of it for days, knew it was inflamed and leaky and a horrific shade of red. The fever and nausea told him that the infection was pretty bad, too. He figured that after everything he'd seen so far, after all the brains on walls and severed ears and _meat,_ it wouldn't hurt him too badly if he just took a peek. At least he'd know what he was working with, right? Would know the extent of the damage, how far he could get with it?

(The question of _how much longer did he have_ was a bitter, broken thing always in the back of his mind.)

The answer to all three of those questions was made clear: very damaged, not far, and not long. Not long at all.

When he finally managed to tear off the sheet that had glued to the wound, crusted to him so tight that it was like another layer of skin, he saw the black tissue that now covered his groin. It shone like glossy shoe polish had been spread over it, thick and leathery and so wrong, so unlike flesh should be, unlike anything he'd ever seen. Wine-colored blisters sprang up from the skin, full of some horrific fluid Waylon didn't have the strength to ponder.

An angry, bloody border crowded around the ridged edges. It looked like horror movie makeup, the kind of thing that people only see on TV and wouldn't believe in real life. It was like someone took a stippling sponge and unconvincingly dotted red corn syrup all over his thighs and stomach, some macabre parody of what an actual wound looked like. 

But this was real. Nothing had ever been more real.

The wound was necrotizing. He didn't have to be a doctor to know that. Bacteria see a good host spot, somewhere warm and horrible to colonize. They eat up all the flesh deep down in the muscle, tearing it apart and spewing gaseous fluids to the surface. The skin gets killed, rots up with nowhere to go and forms a deep, disgusting layer of death that can't be peeled away. No slough, at least; he didn't think he'd have been able to handle wet necrosis.

He didn't have long left, not with the wicked infection that must be deep in his body by now. The fever came and went, sometimes granting him a brief period of lucidity. Of course the one time he's grounded and alert, Waylon fucks himself up even worse. There was no coming back from a sight like that, not when it was between your legs and in your blood and yet so, so far away.

Even when Eddie tore him open again, fucked him scary and fast and so hard he swore he could feel his pelvis creaking at the intrusion, Waylon couldn't accept the reality of it all. His mind kept its distance.

It would have been easy to blame it on the Morphogenic Engine. He could say it was a matter of reality-bending, brainwashing, his own stubborn pride clashing with PsyOps and turning the world inside out. This wasn't his fault. The Engine did what it needed to do, and that was _break._ It robbed men of their memories, took the few good things they had left and smashed them on the floor like an old piggy bank. Then it glued the porcelain back together and called it a day, insisting the bank was the same it had always been. Insisting man is whole is money is pig is man again, flesh had nothing to do with it, just the _thrum thrum thrum_ of the Engine in his ears–

But Waylon was dying and the Engine had nothing to do with the numbness. That was all him.

Lisa always said he was too emotional, took things too personally, wasn't assertive enough. Waylon felt everything loudly, harshly, in every piece of his body. But he never dealt with the things he felt, even when he cried or shouted or sat in silence thinking about it all. He felt things hard and then locked them up, exploded later and swept it all up, tucked it back inside. She told him that his sensitivity would be the death of him, that his empathy would be the thing that took him out.

And she was right.

He blew the whistle, took the beatings and hate and punishment and drank it up, let the asylum swallow him whole. It was never supposed to end like this, not with the stench of infection and leather-black skin climbing his abdomen like ivy. He was supposed to be home by now, packing up the kids and taking them far away. They were meant to adopt new identities, become new people in a new place and forget it at all. Now they would never forget him.

Lisa would never stop looking. He knew that. Maybe that was her fatal flaw; she was so stubborn. She loved too hard, harder than anyone he'd ever met, would take a bullet for any of them in an instant. To imagine her seeing him like this right now… God, she'd have torn Gluskin apart ages ago. She always was tougher than him. More willing to fight and claw and ruin any monster in the dark, under the bed, behind her eyes. She had nightmares sometimes, loud, angry ones where Waylon swore she _was_ the nightmare rather than the victim. Lisa would have won by now or died trying.

He was so tired, the sweat starting to pour down his forehead again and his vision swimming. When had he eaten last? It was hard to tell anymore, none of the moments interlocking the way they should. Everything was so heavy. It would be easy to just shut his eyes now, maybe never wake up again.

But he couldn't do easy.

Lisa would have won by now or died trying.

Death was already a certainty.

So he might as well win.

_**V. urosepsis** _

The sun set and rose before Eddie came to see him again. He wasn't sure what Gluskin did all day; he left Waylon alone so often that it hardly felt like a "marriage," even by Eddie's abstract standards. Maybe he was out trying to find a new bride to replace this one. Perhaps he wasn't the first successful (meaning "survived five minutes past surgery") wife Eddie ever had. That thought alone was enough to steel Waylon's nerves.

When the door opened again, Gluskin looked… wrong. His face was flushed and clammy with an odd pallor to his skin tone. He seemed unsteady on his feet, like balance was escaping him. Where Eddie was usually heavy-footed and sure, he was now careful and confused. He looked as if the world had shifted on him and he was relearning it step-by-step.

When he said something to Waylon, something disgusting and backwards and typical, his speech was slurred and tongue-y, like he was trying to swallow the words back down. Gluskin tumbled onto the bed, hard as ever despite the odd mannerisms, and pulled Waylon's old, revolting dress up. He didn't comment on the severity of the infection, nothing about the puddle of necrotic fluid beneath them, just took his knife out and reopened the slit like he always did before tossing the knife down on the bed.

Waylon finally understood what was going on when Eddie pulled his dick out.

The whole thing was a furious, burning shade of purple-red. The head was swollen and leaking something that looked less like precum and more like ravaging pus, dripping down into the puddle of Waylon's other bodily fluids. Gluskin paid it no mind as he tried to line himself up with Waylon's "vagina," but his depth perception seemed so off.

It took everything in Waylon not to laugh in his face and give himself away because _holy shit, the fucking idiot._

How was it not common sense that you shouldn't stick your dick in a gaping, necrotic, brutal wound, just in case you get infected too?

Christ, it was fucking hilarious.

There was no way Eddie could survive whatever was raging in his body now. They were both doomed, all because Gluskin couldn't resist a new hole to stick his godawful cock in. It was damn near poetic, really and truly. The whole thing was just a waiting game now, seeing who would succumb to the illness first. He _could_ try waiting it all out, watching Eddie deteriorate and maybe even getting to see him die if he was lucky. There was no way one of them wouldn't be going soon.

Waylon used what little of his strength remained to edge his fingers closer to Eddie's knife, haphazardly thrown onto the mattress with the blade still out and dripping. He got his fingers around the handle as Gluskin continued to struggle with his dick.

Of course, he _could_ wait it out. Let nature do its thing, take its time.

Then again, Waylon didn't much care for his and Eddie's post-marriage sex life.

In fact, he fucking _hated it._

With all of the force his weak arms could muster, Waylon drove the knife straight into Eddie's neck. He didn't even stop for a moment, kept trying to pry Waylon apart and fuck him, not noticing the knife sticking out of his throat. Finally, he reached up and grabbed the handle, pulling it out of himself roughly.

Wasn't rule number one of a stab wound to never take out the object?

Blood sprayed out in tandem with Eddie's weak, septic-shocked heartbeat. In huge, warm pulses it poured down onto Waylon and got in his eyes and all over his dress, all over the bed, all over the fucking hellhole that was Waylon's final resting place. Now it would be his too.

There wasn't time for Eddie to grab him, hit him, _anything_ before he collapsed, tumbling off the side of the bed and hitting the floor with a ridiculous, damp _thud._ It was one of the most beautiful, fantastic sounds Waylon had ever heard in his entire life. Gluskin made one last horrible, blood-choked noise, a gurgling wail of muscle contractions and finality. Then, thank god thank god thank _god,_ he shut the fuck up. At long last.

Jesus Christ, he was _dead. Dead dead dead–_

And Waylon wasn't far behind. He wanted to get up, wanted to stab Eddie some more, carve "W + L 4EVER" in a great big heart on his chest and spit on his corpse. The emotions were free. He'd kept it all inside so well, but it was ready to come out now. There wasn't much time left. Final minutes were no time for restraint.

His breaths were getting so heavy as he laughed and laughed and laughed, eyes shutting bit by bit as he laid there in that bed. It stunk like hell, like what Waylon imagined rotten bodies stuck in a blender and churned for hours would smell like, but it was fine. None of it mattered anymore. He was free.

So Waylon let himself close his eyes as he lost the air for laughter, taking in shallow, painful breaths and thinking hard about her. He may have died trying, but fuck it– he _won._ And it was all for her. Every last second of his victory belonged to Lisa.

He thought about her hair. It was so dark and thick. When they were younger, she kept it cropped short, said it wasn't worth the effort. She started growing it out when she got pregnant, let Waylon learn how to braid with it when it reached her shoulders. He spent so much time perfecting braids on her head, learning every version possible just to keep the proximity. It was an excuse to be near her every day, to sit behind her and listen to music and treat her with such wonderful, gentle care.

A part of him wondered if she'd even believe the hands that had braided her hair so many times were the same hands that dug a blade into Gluskin's throat. God, she would be so proud of him. He fucking did it. The email was out. Gluskin was dead. There was nothing left to do except pray this place got torched to the goddamn ground. It would be so beautiful to see it all burn. No place had ever deserved it more.

He wished there was something to braid for Lisa here, something to let her know he did it for her. Even if there was, he knew his skinny, broken fingers wouldn't cooperate. Instead, he just imagined it, looping the braid pattern over and over again in his head and ignoring the sweat that dripped into his eyes. He would have braided the world for her if he'd just had a little more time–

But it was okay. Things didn't always go the way they should. He was at peace now, tucked into his bridal tomb and dreaming of his bride back home, the truest woman he'd ever met. Eddie would have hated her more than anything. That thought brought Waylon joy.

The boys would be okay. Lisa would make sure of that. She was enough of a parent for both of them; it would be sad, but they could do it. He knew they would make it. They had to. And someday Lisa would poke around in the ashes, find his true wedding band and not the one Eddie forced onto his finger, and she'd know he was gone. There would be a finality there. She didn't deserve to have to wonder for the rest of her life.

His breaths were coming in slow now, head going dizzy with the effort, but it was calm. Easy. Peaceful. It would all be over soon.

In the corner of the room, Waylon heard a strange _whrrr_ like the sound of a swarm of bees. He tried to open his eyes to see the source of the sound, but he couldn't remember how to open his eyelids. It was okay. Maybe he'd find out someday. Maybe not.

It didn't matter anymore. He was free.

For Lisa, he won.

**Author's Note:**

> i looked at so many awful medical photos for this. i hope it shows (also might buy a shirt that says "ask me about gas gangrene!" just so i can do something with the knowledge i collected for this fic)
> 
> hit me up on [tumblr](https://saintchlorine.tumblr.com)! kudos and comments are always greatly appreciated <3


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